The consumer insights tracking helping Beiersdorf marketers navigate the crisis

A concerted effort to build real-time consumer sentiment tracking has seen Beiersdorf pivot its marketing, media and social approach to meet changing behavioural trends during the COVID-19 crisis.

Beiersdorf head of data analytics and insights for brand and media, Shameek Raj, told CMO the international skincare company has traditionally undertaken market, product, packaging, brand and consumer research using external platforms but found itself in need of an internal capability allowing more timely access to insights. So the Australian team brought on the Qualtrics platform at the end of last year.

The first ambition was regular campaign and brand pulse tracking to understand how well campaigns and the group’s brands are going, using key measures such as ad recall, campaign recall, impact, brand health and attributes. Beiersdorf’s brand portfolio includes Nivea, Elastoplast and Eucerin.

“That was all going great, and then COVID-19 hit,” Raj said. “We saw the market go into shock and panic. As FMCGs, we had to rely on people finding our products online. There was no precedent or rulebook on responding to this or knowing what would happen.”

Globally, Beiersdorf tapped into external research services to try and keep up with rapidly changing consumer behavioural trends and sentiment. But Raj found these inadequate for understanding the unique Australia situation. For one, Australia didn’t get the same numbers, severity of cases or deaths. What’s more, insights were quite generic and didn’t meet category or specific product needs.

“The work was around general sentiment and things like government trust or consumer trends, but these were not put together with consumption of our category and how people behaved in our space,” Raj said.  

So the local team replicated brand tracking set-up via Qualtrics and adjusted it to suit COVID-related questions and responses. Raj said this measured how well dominant brands and wider institutions such as government are performing, consumptions levels and where concerns are, such as economic, health or being worried about family. But it’s also highlighted what consumers are doing in the crisis – such as working from home - and how these aspects affect consumption of categories like skincare and personal care, along with shopping patterns and usage.

“Linking those two things together gave us a rich picture of what was occupying consumers’ minds at a higher and larger point of view, and how that affects them at a home level and relating to our category,” Raj said.  

Tracking kicked off just as COVID broke in Australia, and continued on a weekly basis during the peak of the crisis. As Australia enters a tentative COVID-10 recovery phase this has been adjusted to fortnightly frequency. There’s also been a focus on ensuring a large number of people each time, and a good cross-section of Australians, are engaged.

“As things normalise, we are seeing that in the tracker – we are heading back to normal – so we’re moving that out to fortnightly frequency. A benefit of the platform is you can pivot back to weekly, fortnightly or longer as you need to,” he said.  

This flexibility has played out during COVID-10,  with the platform providing Raj’s team with the ability to change questions and gain results quickly, as well as tweak surveys in days, not weeks.

What Beiersdorf found out about consumer behaviour

Long-term, Beiersdorf is hopeful of understanding if the behaviour of people will change more permanently off the back of the COVID-19 crisis. But in the shorter term, there has been a wealth of insights to help the group navigate swiftly changing consumer sentiment.

For example, in the early phase of the crisis, product messaging wasn’t resonating.

“We were quick to see in the peak - by week four and five – that there was a spike in health concerns and about getting sick and getting the virus,” Raj explained. “As we started bucking the curve, we saw how that pivoted into more economic issues and concerns. From there, we’ve seen become less about the economy and more about personal finances and issues.

“We also linked that to how they responded to our category. For example, when the larger concern was staying healthy and keeping your loved ones safe, brand messages and what we were selling had no impact whatsoever – they had no interest in it. Using that insight, we pivoted out of a lot of FMCG product advertising and pushed that out.

“But once we starting mapping sentiment when they were coming back into the market, we saw consumers becoming more open to brand messaging. So when there were less concerns about health and more recognition of life coming back to normal, we pulled forward our campaigns to meet that sentiment.”  

Another trend Beiersdorf responded to was consumers looking for entertainment and content that would take their minds off the situation. It pivoted into more social campaigns with more of a saliency objective accordingly.

An example was talking about having fun with washing, and creating a media splash campaign on TikTok. “We also found with some of our core skincare and washing products –shower, soap, facewash – there was a doubling in terms of consumption over normal usage. That was unusual, and we pivoted towards that over moisturising and skincare,” Raj said.

As people worked from home more, consumption of other categories was also changing.

“Unless you’re doing face-to-face meetings every day, the consumption of moisturiser and anti-ageing products reduced. When that happens, you don’t cleanse as much, and so on. And that takes on a more pampering aspect rather than a rational one,” Raj said.

While social campaigning wasn’t a direct result of COVID, Raj said its COVID-19 consumer sentiment tracking resulted in Beiersdorf spending money in channels in new and different ways.

“This was driven by a combination of things, but this has given us confidence to go in that direction,” he said. “We also tracked consumption of media and types, and saw a lift in social platforms, plus the need for people to engage more socially.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re making decisions on hundreds of thousands of dollars of spending and on channels, it gives you the insights you need.”  

Related: How Nivea delivered a better ROI on marketing spend

Related: CMOs in the spotlight on consumers and the crisis

Up next: Just how permanent these consumer behavioural changes are, plus how Beiersford upskilled staff to embrace data insights

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Ascertaining permanent consumer behavioural change

As the sense that things will be OK gains ground, it’s coming through the sentiment tracking and informing how Beiersdorf navigates the next phase of the pandemic.

“There’s this kind of calm before the storm in terms of economic and financial impact. That’s what’s dominant in consumers’ minds and we have to be wary of how that plays out. The sentiment is normalising, but there is that greater economic and financial concern,” Raj said.  

However, Raj wasn’t convinced some consumer behaviours exhibited during the crisis would be long-lasting.

“Because we were lucky enough to bring down the curve, we haven’t solidified some the new behaviours yet. As quickly as people pivoted into online channels, they’re quickly pivoting out of them at the same rate to what’s familiar: For example, turning to buying their groceries online versus going into the store,” he said.

“In our category, what it does show is that it won’t take much to change the consumption behaviours in the future. It’s coming. It all depends on what the retailers and brands do in their response to this, and how consumers then respond.”

The ultimate learning for Raj? Consumers will switch if it’s easy for them. “That’s the opportunity and danger at this point,” he said.  

“In our category of retail and FMCG, there’s an element of secondary gain from physical shopping. Consumers experience discovery and browsing you can’t normally get online. That experience being in the shop versus online is very different – one is engaging and sensory, the other is clinical and academic at times. It’s something we have to be mindful of this as well.

“That’s the opportunity – the current model, if we’re not careful, could be improved on by the likes of Amazon and it won’t take much for consumers to switch. What we have learnt is it doesn’t take much to change behaviour, and there is a level of convenience and time saving to taking the physical stuff out.”

Getting up to speed

Ensuring staff were able to tap into these insights was vital to action. To help, Raj’s team built simplistic dashboards allowing employees to tap into questions and see results in real time, whenever they want. As consumers uploaded responses, for instance, they can see how things are changing day-by-day.

The insights team also fed out core results in a more traditional way. There was also a need to upskill people and build their confidence in looking at research to glean the right insights.

“There is a level of change management and upskilling needed. Luckily we had the platform six months before COVID hit,” Raj said.  

A wider benefit of the platform is it allows the insights team to have a seat at the table.

“We can talk from a point of view of recent evidence and real-time knowledge. We had that power of data and timely research on consumer insight,” Raj said. “I think it’s also helped that what we have been reporting was what people were facing themselves internally.

“But we still had to do work to set up reports, build and present, help people through the data as they’re not used to seeing survey results in this way. It’s a matter of education, which is part of the role we play as well.”

As a final point, Raj said this kind of tracking lends confidence to numbers, supporting that all-important marketing intuition.

“Sometimes in marketing, we rely a lot on intuition. If data can back that, it helps further inform us to have the right conversations at the right time,” he concluded.

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